So I’ve been playing with photos lately, as I prepare to launch my Amerine Photography side business. And while I tend to be a purist when it comes to editing, sometimes I like to play a little bit… so here is just one picture, three ways, from yesterday. [Also testing out the watermark.]

Fairly pure.

More of a ‘wedding type look’.

New York Vintage.

When I do edit something like that, I tend to use pre-sets. Both the two above were free presets I found through searching…. anyone know of other good sources for Lightroom Presets that they love? Let me know in the comments.

Okay – so yes, I was going to try for 30 days. And I did nine in a row. Then I slightly injured myself (achilles from hills & running), and then hurt myself again (letting Katherine ride on my back during Music Class pretending to be an elepant – things you do for your kids)…. and now its the 21st and I probably have like 12 days of exercise done. Woops! And I’m still sore and slightly injured.

New plan. New challenge. Or re-done challenge. One of the things I’ve realized as I take two minutes to write this when I really don’t have the time – is that I don’t have time during the day right now to workout. While I like to think my flexible work schedule allows me this time, right now it really doesn’t. I have a lot to do right now. So my goal is to start waking up a few minutes earlier, to do some light basic workouts, like walking/biking in my basement on the workout equipment. To help ease out of these injuries and get it done before the day truly starts. If I can do this 7 out of the remaining 10 days of this month – I think that’s a great start. So that’s my new challenge. I will wake up 7 of the remaining 10 days in March to do some sort of exercise and start the day off right.

I ended up taking a couple days easy due to my Achilles starting to ache – but I did take some time to talk a slow walk with my camera. And my coffee as you’ll see. Here are a few of the photos – mostly me just playing around with the camera and then I started to play with some editing too on the latter photos.

It was a very blue sky afternoon around 4 p.m. I don’t normally get a chance to shoot at that time of day, outside. The bright sun is a challenge but fun too!

My coffee – the new Starbucks logo thanks to their anniversary special – buy a coffee, get a cupcake. Yum.

Sometimes its hard to remember to look up – but then I saw this!

Below is where I start getting fun with edits…

I hope everyone gets out to enjoy the signs of spring coming. Its so beautiful to see it start to bud & flower – and this weekend is amazing.

There are signs of spring turning up outside. One day I’ll take a walk with my camera but in the meantime, here is what I found in my front yard. Just hoping we don’t get a freeze that kills all these amazing buds that are forming. Seems like there is always something around April 1st – we’ll see!

(The above is the rose bush I always take photos of… this is the photo of it without roses but lots of new growth.)

These confuse me a little – they had these pink flowers in the fall too… not sure its new growth or what, but I love them – they are fun & funky.

So I love Mardi Gras – the family version anyway. I was born in New Orleans. I think I was fed king cake as my first baby food. Had huge boxes of beads and dabloons to play with as a kid. Love it.

Tonight, I am introducing it to my kids. Sausage with red beans & rice for dinner, some king cake and they each have a bead necklace. [We might also have a rum-based drink for the adults. Yum.]

I’ve spend a lot of time today trying to remember the whole reason there is a Fat Tuesday – its the feast before Lent. A time to self-reflect and to give up something, or change a behavior. In college I took it as a time to give up something easy, like chocolate – stick to it until Easter, you are done. But I wasn’t self-reflecting. I was giving up something just to say I could give it up and have the will power to do it.

Headed into this year, I am trying to truly look at myself and see some behaviors I want to change. The first I thought of, the second my husband brought up – and both are worthy and so I’m going to do both.

First – while its still giving up food, its giving up a night time dessert/snack. I am trying to be healthy and workout and lose weight – yet every night around 8 pm I get this sweet craving. I justify it by saying, well its a ‘weight watchers ice cream’ or its only 3 points… but I really think its part of a bad cycle for me. And I need it to stop. I know how – I know that a cup of hot tea with a touch of agave can tide me over – that I’m not hungry. Its a behavior I need to stop, and so it stops tomorrow. [Tonight is King Cake afterall]

Second – the smartphone. Gosh we love them don’t we? And I have been better about not being on it around the kids, but not great. So for Lent? No smartphone around the kids at home. This doesn’t count phone calls – its not about that. Its about checking Facebook, Twitter, blogs and email. I only get a couple precious hours with them at night – I shouldn’t be on the smartphone.

So hopefully I can turn this spring truly into one of self-reflection and improvement.

Anyone else want to join me?

[And workout update on my March challenge – March 8th and I have done 20+ minutes of working out 8 days in a row!!! I’m very proud of myself. I didn’t want to a few of the days, and I always feel better after.]

As I said in my last post, I was hoping March was the turning point for the year. Better about eating, working out, less sickness in the household… spring and hope.

And so far – two workouts in two days, courtesy of Jillian Michaels dvds (really, I love these dvds… even if I sometimes want to punch her.) After seeing some other tweets about trying to do the 30-day shred again, I thought – well why not. Let’s try it. Only a bit modified. I want to work out 30 days in March. Out of 31. By work out I mean 20 minutes minimum of movement – a walk counts, but prefer something more heart pumping.

Since I have the sprint triathalon in June to be thinking about – I think I’ll try to alternate cross training with the dvds by JM with the C25k program. So one day will be a shred (like today), another 6 week 6 pack, and the next perhaps interval walk/run training. Occasionally I’ll try to add in bike but I’m saving that more for April and then adding swimming in May (please be warm enough.) The tri isn’t that far away really – mid-June.